We didn’t think about this before but we totally see it now: Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama is the modern day Indonesian version of the Spartan King Leonidas (as portrayed by Gerald Butler in the blockbuster hit ‘300’).
That’s what some Jakartans think of Ahok, anyways, as memes and comic strips of the governor doing Leonida’s famous shove kick have gone viral recently.
It all began when a Path user named Gonza complained about how, even though people exiting the Transjakarta bus should be given priority to disembark, that is often not the case as the exit is usually blocked by people rushing into the bus (we’ve all experienced this before).
And then, a Path user claiming to be Ahok replied by saying that, when faced with such a situation, we should shove kick the offenders out of the way while yelling “This is Sparta!”
This inspired comic artist Iskandar Salim (who created the hilarious Faktap Comics https://instagram.com/komikfaktap/) to draw Ahok channeling Leonidas in a Transjakarta bus and in a similar situation while exiting a lift.
The real governor Ahok seems to have taken all this with good humor. However, he clarified that he did not own the aforementioned Path account and that he wouldn’t kick people out of the way.
“The account was made by someone else. I only have [the Twitter account] @basuki_btp,” he said, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.
